Shabbat Reflection: Look Beyond the Packaging

I have never been a big fan of k-cup coffee—that is, the single-serving drip coffee made popular when Keurig machines overtook the market a number of years ago. My primary objection was that they were wasteful: Every cup yielded a little disposable plastic container that had to bethe thrown in the trash. The idea made me uncomfortable because, after all, I want to be environmentally conscious and do the right thing. This just seemed like yet the latest example of bad, late-stage capitalist self-centeredness??(a single serving, just for me—not even a pot of coffee I could share with others, because why would I ever do that?!).

So I was surprised to read an?article?in the Washington Post this week that turned my assumptions on their head. According to Canadian researchers, “In some cases, brewing a cup of joe in an old-school filter coffee maker can generate roughly 1? times more emissions than using a pod machine.” Wow, unexpected news—but not illogical. It turns out that the energy used to brew a larger pot of coffee and keep it warm might make the carbon footprint of the k-cup lower than the pot I put on in the morning, even after accounting for the plastic container.?

As the article says in a subheading, “Don’t just focus on packaging.” It quotes a researcher at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) to elaborate: “As a consumer, what we’re left with is the visible waste in front of us, and that often tends to be packages and plastics. But the impact of packaging, in general, is much, much smaller than the product itself.”?

This is a small example of a phenomenon we encounter all the time: Our minds develop a narrative based on what we see in front of us, and it quickly becomes hard for us to consider the other elements of the story that we don’t perceive directly. We see people behaving in a way we find problematic or disagreeable and our mind immediately conjures a story (usually a judgmental one) about them. Then, when more facts emerge, it turns out we had it all wrong. We do this over and over again—not only with other people, but with ourselves too. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, what we can and can’t do, and we’re locked into those narratives—only, perhaps, to discover later on that the story was far different than what we imagined.?

The story of the Exodus from Egypt, the touchstone narrative of Jewish life, is our regular call to expand our minds out of this narrowness. Egypt—Mitzrayim in Hebrew—is not only the physical or historical place of enslavement from which our ancestors were liberated three thousand years ago, but the existential and spiritual state of constriction, narrowness—meitzarim?in Hebrew—into which our minds slip over and over and over again. As the Hasidic masters taught, the Exodus from Egypt didn’t just happen once; it continually happens whenever we reawaken to the broader capacities of our minds and hearts to move beyond the blinders that constrain us.

Towards the beginning of the Torah portion of Vaera (Exodus 6:2-9:35), Moses comes to the Israelites to tell them of the Redeemer’s intention to liberate them from Egypt, to bring them to their homeland. It’s a thrilling moment—this is the news they’ve been awaiting for centuries. “But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses,?mikotzer ruach umeavodah kashah,?because their spirits were constricted and the labor was harsh.” (Ex. 6:9) Commenting on this passage, Rashi observes: “When one is in a state of constriction, their breath comes in short gasps and they cannot draw long breaths.” We’ve all felt this—at moments of pain, suffering, loss. It’s hard to breathe. But of course it also works in the other direction: When we don’t expand our breath—literally—we foster within ourselves a state of spiritual constriction as well. Conversely, when we bring awareness and intention to our breath, making it more expansive, we nurture a reciprocal expansion in our hearts and minds.?

This, to me, is one of the core texts of Jewish spiritual practice. Not only annually at the Seder, but every day, and even from moment to moment, we can bring awareness and intention to the totality of our being: starting with our breath, expanding to our bodies, hearts, and minds. We can tap into the great freedom that lies just underneath the experience of narrowness and constriction, just below the surface of?Mitzrayim.?When we scratch that surface, we can step into a portal of liberation that enables us to return home, to wider vistas of understanding and modes of greater ease in our being.

The coffee article has it right: Don’t just focus on the packaging. (The article actually concludes with a quote from the Michigan researcher: “It really comes down to being mindful about the products that you consume and trying not to waste our products.” Mindfulness for the win!) Our practice is here to help us understand the fuller picture—not just of our coffee consumption, but of everything we do throughout the day. May we continually liberate ourselves from Egypt and help others find their way to freedom from oppression of mind, body, and spirit.